Graham Norton: I love Will.i.am – he’s not as weird as you’d think

Graham Norton, 49, once dressed up as Mother Teresa to do stand-up. Here he talks to Metro about his BBC programme The Graham Norton Show, celebrity guests on his wish-list and why he likes presenting the Eurovision Song Contest.

Graham Norton talks to Metro about the new series of his chat show (Picture: Getty)

What can people expect from the new series?

It’s the same as the old series but with different guests. That’s the good thing about chat shows – you never know who you’ll get. There can be great names in the frame but it can turn out to be quite a dull show, then you can have names that don’t sound so great but it will turn out to be the best show of the series.

Who surprised you most?

Will.i.am. I didn’t think anything about him, then I saw The Voice and quite liked him, then he did the show and I completely fell in love with him. He’s a bit of a slow burn. If he was on by himself you might think he’s a bit weird but he has a great sense of humour, which you saw in the way he interacted with the other guests. That’s the good thing about having all the guests on at the same time – you find out a lot about them by how they behave towards the other guests.

Have any guests not understood where you’re coming from?

Harvey Keitel didn’t get it, it wasn’t for him. I showed him an action figure of him that had a little plastic gun and he went mad because it was apparently in his contract he wouldn’t be associated with toy guns – but once you’ve been in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction it’s a bit late to worry about it.

Do you miss getting the sex aids out?

No, we did that as much as we could. We stopped before everyone got tired of it. We drew a line under that and found a new format.

Are there any guests left you’d like to get on the show?

Madonna was always the one to get and she was on last year. We’ve never had Brad Pitt or George Clooney . We’re getting Arnold Schwarzenegger this season. I like him. I’m glad he’s not the governor of my state but he seems very self-aware.

What’s the worst stand-up gig you’ve done?

My third. It was in Galway and ended with the audience chanting ‘f*** off’. Dying on stage isn’t nice but getting paid after takes the sting out of it. I was rubbish and didn’t know what I was doing. It’s much worse watching someone die on stage than dying on stage. When it’s happening to you, it’s not pleasant but not that bad.

Was that during the time you were doing gigs dressed as Mother Teresa?

It was after that. I did some Edinburgh shows and said ‘I’m not a stand-up’ but then wrote a show that was pretty much stand-up. The Galway gig was in the very early days of doing that.

Do you fancy doing stand-up again?

I do. The trouble is, the only way is to tour, which I’m far too lazy to do. I’d like to do stand-up but obviously not enough to actually do it. The comedy scene is incredible now – everyone plays these huge stadiums. Stand-ups are making huge amounts of money without telly, whereas in my day the only way to make money was to get a telly gig. It’s good because a lot of really funny people didn’t get on telly back then.

What was it like to watch Andrew Lloyd Webber do a talent show without you (Superstar)?

If I was the only bit that had been replaced it would have been weird but it was different enough from the shows I did for it not to bother me. I only saw the first three shows.

Are you enjoying your Eurovision hosting duties?

I am – and I’m very pleased Sweden won so we’re going somewhere civilised this year. I don’t know much about Azerbaijan but it’s a weird place and Baku is a very strange town but they put on a good show, apart from the interval act, which was embarrassing. He was a nice guy but to do that, a huge interval act because he’s the president’s son-in-law, and to chew gum while doing so wasn’t good. If you’re going to be flown in on wires, don’t be chewing gum during a close-up on your face. I thought that was unforgivable.

You’re an agony uncle for a broadsheet newspaper. What’s been the most unusual problem?

It runs the gamut. A lot of them are quite general relationship questions, which is fair enough – why not ask me? No one really knows how relationships work. Others have been ‘my husband’s gambled away all our money’ or ‘I suspect my son is a drug addict’ and I don’t understand why they’re writing to me. They want more serious advice in those situations so I tell them: ‘Thanks for writing but you need to go to a professional.’ I don’t want to make a serious situation worse. I could make some jokes at their expense but I could do some lasting harm. I feel I have to take all the problems seriously just in case.

Have you got any unfulfilled career aspirations?

I have thoroughly exceeded any aspirations. The original plan was to do enough gigs to pay the rent and have a bottle of wine at the weekends. For it to have lasted this long is a miracle. I’ve achieved a lot more than I ever thought I would.The Graham Norton Show returns to BBC1 tonight at 10.35pm.